ViolinThomas Dougherty

Composer and violinist Thomas (“Tommy”) Dougherty is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is a composer of orchestral, chamber and solo works.

In 2023 the Orchestra of St. Luke’s will premiere a new work by Mr. Dougherty through his participation in the DeGaetano Composition Institute where he is working closely with mentor composer Anna Clyne. He is in residence at the Winterthur Museum as a Maker-Creator Fellowship Scholar. In 2021 Mr. Dougherty received a joint commission from the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra and Laurel Arts to compose a work as a tribute to the people of Somerset for the 20th Anniversary of September 11th. He has since been commissioned to write a new work for the JSO’s 2022-23 season finale.

Over the past several years, Mr. Dougherty’s music has been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, the Modern Violin Ensemble (MoVE), Alarm Will Sound, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra, Kinetic: The Conductorless Ensemble, Thornton School Symphony Orchestra, Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra and Eastman Philharmonia.

In 2019 Mr. Dougherty was the recipient of the ASCAP Leo Kaplan Award, and in 2016 and 2017, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Awards. In 2018 the Modern Violin Ensemble (MoVE) premiered Extraordinary Instruments, a violin quartet that aims to bring awareness to issues of gun culture in the United States.

As a violinist, Mr. Dougherty has served for several years as Acting Section Violin with the San Diego Symphony. He has performed with the Pacific Symphony, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra in Los Angeles, CA and Kinetic: The Conductorless Ensemble in Houston, TX.

Mr. Dougherty received his Master of Music degree in composition from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and his Bachelor’s degrees in both composition and violin performance from the Eastman School of Music. In 2019 he completed his DMA in composition at the USC Thornton School of Music where he studied privately with Andrew Norman and Sean Friar.

Throughout his compositional studies, Tommy Dougherty has worked privately with Karim Al-Zand, Arthur Gottschalk, David Liptak, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Bob Morris, Leonardo Balada and Efrain Amaya. His primary violin teachers include Lina Bahn, Ayano Ninomiya, Lynn Blakeslee and Hong-Guang Jia.

For more information and to hear Mr. Dougherty’s music, visit:
tsdoughertycomposer.com
soundcloud.com/tommy-s-dougherty